HS fastpitch - intentional vs unintentional interference

[FDT92]

Is there a difference in HS ball?

No one on. Girl hits a triple. She is rounding third as the ball is thrown in and gets by the catcher. Pitcher covers home.

The ball has rebounded up the the third base side in foul territory. The on-deck batter moves out of the catchers way but is watching the girl on third. catcher picks up the ball and goes to throw to the pitcher on home (B/R on 3rd is already holding up at this point). Catcher's throw hits the on-deck batter in the head and the ball rolls out to the mound (B/R stayed on 3rd).

Umpire ruled offensive interference and ruled the on deck batter out instead of the girl at 3rd. (Wanting to keep a runner on 3rd the call was not argued that much.)

I have seen some rule books use the words "intentional interference" but I don't know how HS does this. Should anyone have been out if the interference was unintentional?

As the on-deck batter is one of the persons allowed in the playing area, how is this much different from the defense making a bad throw and hitting a base runner?

[team mom]

I pulled this off another website. It is an answer by a ASA umpire about runner interference:

"To have interference, the offensive player, in the umpire's judgment, must be impeding, hindering, or trying to confuse a defensive player. Now you notice that the rule doesn't say anything about intentions. The player does not have to do any of these things intentionally to get called out for interference. So if a runner accidentally bumps a shortstop in the middle of throwing to first and the ball sails over the right field fence guess what? Dead ball, interference, the runner is out. Also notice that there is nothing about the runner stopping or going around a defensive player. There is nothing in the rules that indicate this must be done. All the runners can do is to try to avoid a defensive team's attempt at a play."


And according to the ASA website, the word "intentional" was removed from the rules in 2007 so umps are making judgements only about actions and not someone's intentions.

[mprusak]

Does Bryan's answer in this thread apply?

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[ixamnis]

We had a runner interference call that I'm not sure if I scored correctly. In high school girls fastpitch softball game: Runner on first with one out. Batter grounds to shortstop. Shortstop throws to second for the force and the second baseman attempts to throw to first for the double play. Umpire in the field calls out at second, safe at first. Home plate umpire overrules and says because the runner going into second does not attempt to slide or get out of the way that the batter is also out at first.

I think I scored it as. in play, FC 6-4-3, what happened to runner on first, runner force out second, what happened to batter on first, out for runner interference. The score card makes it look like the batter caused the runner interference when it was the runner going into second. Since the batter was ultimately called out, I should have probably started out with out instead of in play, I don't seem to be able to re-edit that now.

[Bryan D Shepherd]

FDT: Umpire blew it. The on-deck batter cannot be called out since she's not a batter yet. She's considered bench personnel. Runner on third should've been called out. (In this case, the runner closest to home should've been called out.)

Additional note: No, there is no difference between unintentional and intentional. The only difference that MAY happen, is if the umpire thinks the girl (or player) was being something really dumb, the umpire could've ejected her, but as far as a difference in penalties, there is none.

ixamnis: That's what I would've scored it as. I would just add a note that says the runner caused interference after she was forced out causing the batter to be called out.

[OhioTex]

(nice to see old friends in this thread)

[Bryan D Shepherd]

lol Hey Tex!